My Words Trickle Down

So I guess there is this book meme that keeps cropping up lately, and I guess I will participate. It at least only asks me to answer one question at a time, and maybe that will be a way to make me actually make entries and put things in writing and stuff.

So, Book Meme! It looks like you are sort of supposed to do it over the course of a calendar month, but I'll start now anyway 'cause that's how I roll. ( Day 1: Best book you read last year )

In other news, it's been rainy and disgusting for two days straight now. Which wouldn't be so bad, except that now that I'm cycling everywhere it just makes everything sort of miserable. Like yesterday, it didn't feel worth it to shell out for the bus for a 4-hour shift at work, so I cycled in because it had apparently stopped raining, only it started again as I was leaving the house, and I made the unwise decision to carry on anyway rather than cut my losses and hop on a bus. And then today we had (free!) tickets to a play, but because of stupid Sunday timetables, couldn't get in on the bus for it, and so had to cycle. Fortunately, it turned out to be totally awesome and definitely worth cycling through the rain to see, so that was okay.

Wikipedia just read my mind.

Which is to say, someone else must have made the same edit I was going to make, at the same time as me. I was reading the page for the song 'She'll Be Coming 'Round the Mountain' (or rather, I was initially reading about Mother Jones, but you know how Wikipedia does), and I noticed that the second verse was listed as "She'll be ridin' twenty seven white horses when she comes", which a) aren't the words, b) doesn't make any sense, and c) doesn't even scan.

I went to edit, and lo, the edit page read "She'll be ridin' six white horses when she comes"! I clicked back to the original page. "Twenty seven". Refreshed. "Twenty seven". Back to the edit page. "Six". So I previewed and then saved it. I mean, I was actually going to put "drivin' six white horses", but who am I to argue with the apparent gods of the internet? I've heard it as both 'ridin'' and 'drivin'', and although the latter makes more sense (how do you ride more than one horse?), 'ridin'' it is.

In other internet news, this morning I read the new XKCD, which was gently poking fun at Google+ as being nothing more than a non-Facebook Facebook, and had as its alt-text: "On one hand, you'll never be able to convince your parents to switch. On the other hand, you'll never be able to convince your parents to switch!"

Then I checked my email, and found an invitation to join Google+ ... from my dad.

"In 1191, monks claimed to have discovered the remains of Arthur and Guinevere at Glastonbury abbey. Though latter-day cynics have observed that the building had recently suffered a fire and an influx of tourists would have been of great assistance to the restoration fund, the find cemented the area's status as the focal point of English mysticism and crystal healing shops."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-13696160

You know, if I were a spy or some other kind of secret agent, and felt obliged to keep a suicide pill on me at all times, I would definitely NOT keep it in a hollow tooth. I mean, I know it is risky to have it on a necklace or whatever because what if your hands are tied up when you need to use it? A hollow tooth seems foolproof, until one day you're off duty, chilling out in your underwear eating corn nuts, and suddenly CRACK! and then a few seconds of agonizing pain, and then nothing.

I finished watching Star Trek: Deep Space 9 recently, which means I finally get to talk about it. There may be some spoilers below, but I'll keep them out of the first part and put the rest under a cut.

Terry Eagleton's latest book, Reason, Faith and Revolution* argues that most atheists are missing the point when discussing a 'belief in God', because (according to him) what most faithful people mean when they say that they 'believe in God' is that they believe that God is good and will take care of them, and so on. I.e., they are saying they have faith IN God, as opposed to faith THAT God. I lost patience at this point because, quite obviously, any beliefs in the goodness of God are predicated on the belief that God exists. You can't postulate about the properties of x without first postulating the existence of x.

The thing about DS9, though, is that the Bajoran's gods actually exist. Really, genuinely, undisputably. Other species generally lack the Bajorans' faith in them (faith in, not faith that), referring to them as 'wormhole aliens', but at least after episode 1 there can be no doubt that, whether or not one refers to them as 'The Prophets', the creatures traditionally known as 'The Prophets' do exist.

It is very strange to me, therefore, that the supposedly scientifically-minded Federation chose to continue to regard the Bajoran religion with the same distancing scepticism it held before the undisputable proof of their gods' existence, which occurred at the beginning of the series. Now, it would be understandable to remain sceptical of the beings' status as gods, or in their intentions or supposed goodwill regarding the lives of the people of Bajor. But these are apparently creatures that are known to have accurate prescient abilities, due to existing outside of normal time (or something to that effect). And while, even so, it might make a sort of sense to take with a grain of salt or even outright ignore the Bajoran prophecies -- which are so shrouded in mystical language that they are, at the very least, difficult to interpret -- when the Prophets/Wormhole Aliens directly communicate with one of your senior officers, don't you think it would be reasonable for Starfleet to take them seriously? Instead the admirals are all "Oh, um, uh, er, we're not really comfortable with this whole 'religious' thing. We'd better go ahead with our plans as though we weren't just warned of their doom-causing by creatures that can definitely see the future." *headdesk*

I exist in normal time, though, and I am running out of it, so I'll limit myself to one quick spoiler-y observation, below the cut: ( conclusion of Season 7 )

* Half of this is a fantastic book: parts 1 and 2 are a hilariously acerbic and (as far as I can tell) largely justified polemic against militant atheism; but then in parts 3 and 4 he gets all religious and his arguments stop making sense.

Who is responsible for this (recent?) fad for faux-marble patterned countertops. They've been in nearly every flat I've lived in, and are pretty common just about everywhere, if my family and friends' houses are any indication.

I guess they look alright, but they are an absolute pain in the ass to clean, because they don't show any dirt. These are food preparation surfaces, not overcoats. Not showing the dirt that's on them is not a virtue. In fact it is downright unhygenic. And I for one am sick of it.

So, the idea that in order to save the human race, preserve for ourselves any kind of palatable future on this planet, etc., requires us all to extend our sense of empathy to include those outside our immediate circles is hardly a new one, but this video does deserve some credit for framing it as a necessary rather than a sufficient condition. Also, the animation is hypnotizing.

It's an interesting basic refutation of Enlightenment-style rational-self-interest morality theory, although it is rather astonishingly provincial in its so-called history of empathy bits. Also short-sighted in the optimism of its conclusions, e.g. when pointing out the global rush of empathy for Haiti after the earthquake, it fails to note how "all of humanity" lost interest distressingly soon thereafter. Perhaps I'm just cynical? 'Cause it seems to me like most people, when pressed, will acknowledge a moral duty to any living person (or sometimes, living being) but only actually feel obliged to do anything to help someone when they feel some immediate sense of empathy with them -- and this itself is nothing new; Hume noted as much in the 1700s.

I don't know where I'm going with this ramble. I blame the 'flu.

After an overnight drive down from chilly Massachusetts, I am back in North Carolina for a week, and oh my goodness it is lovely. Not just because the weather right now is comparable to a warm summer day in Scotland, but to be back among the trees at what must be their most beautiful time of year. I've written at (possibly excessive) length, in the past, about how much I miss being around trees all the time. It's hard to describe most of the time, but with their added aspect of seasonal beauty, it suddenly seems easier.

Autumn trees are lovely everywhere you go, of course, but in many places they're a view you come upon exceptionally: pretty little stands of trees on suburban lanes and in city parks and gardens. The UK countryside is stripped almost bare. Here, though, you can look in any direction, anywhere you go, and unless you are looking at some particular human edifice, or the ocean, you will be met by a stunningly beautiful array of orange, yellow, and dark red leaves, picked out by the dark green of loblolly pines and the light green of deciduous leaves that have not yet turned. Everywhere you look. Even in the awful awful suburbs, most of the time.

Even in the awful awful suburbs, though, there are little forest parks. The city of Raleigh has exterminated nearly all of its woodlands, but on the grounds of its newly remodeled art museum, it has put down trails and interspersed art installations among some of its remaining trees. My dad and brother and I went and walked around them yesterday. It was very pretty, although most of the installations were unremarkable -- with two exceptions. In one, the artist had painted designs inspired by European floral patterns (as usually seen in cloth) onto the pavement of the paths, and according to the sign, beneath the final obscuring coat of paint they'd written out the names of all the invasive species of plants now local to the area.

The other was more remarkable, if somewhat less thought-provoking. Named the "Cloud Chamber", it was a low hut set under a fairly open stand of trees, small and round, with nothing inside except three benches set against the white-painted walls. We entered by ducking through a small door, and upon closing it found ourselves in what seemed like total darkness, but for a pinprick of light coming in from the peak of the roof. As our eyes adjusted, though, we began to see the shadowy impressions of leaves and branches on the walls, which brightened and sharpened as our pupils dilated further. They were the branches high above, refracted down through the tiny hole like the exposure in a pinhole camera. It was, to put it simply, really, really cool.

We had not intended to go into the museum itself, but ended up going in briefly, towards the end of our visit. I hadn't been in since it was remodelled, and it was weird to see the collections of paintings and statues I'd grown up visiting and was so accustomed to seeing in their older, more traditional settings set around the new, very modern, brightly lit, open-plan museum. I was also interested to see a new collection they'd added (a "generous donation from the Hearst family"), which consisted of several artifacts of various antiquity from western and central Africa -- interested not just in the objects themselves, but in how they were displayed.

It seems customary for most American and European museums, when displaying items whose specific origin is unkown, to merely list the geographic and temporal origins of the piece. These provided this information, but on every single piece, using the same format as the info cards accompanying the modern paintings and sculptures, in the space for the artist's name they'd written 'Artist Unknown'. Explicitly displaying each piece, then, not as a cultural artifact but as a piece of art, the work of an individual, albeit an uknown one.

I was reflecting happily on this* when I turned the corner to find a display of the museum's older collection of ancient Greek and Roman statues, and saw that they had not been similarly labelled -- their info cards merely stated the name of the statue and what was known of its geographic and temporal origins. This is, of course, quite usual, as mentioned, but in a museum that was making such and effort to mark out the forgotten artists in its other collections, the double standard was jarring. Is it simply that "everyone knows" that a marble statue will have been sculpted by an artist, and thus the fact of the artist's existence, and our ignorance of their identity, need not be mentioned -- yet the artists themselves are a forgotten element in the shaping of the captured artworks we've looted from the places we've conquered? Probably so. But I can't help but think the point would've been driven further home by including the 'artist unknown' label on the pieces of murky European antiquity, and not just African.

* Though with qualifying thoughts about the veneration of 'the artist' and concepts about "what makes art art". 'Art' as 'item produced by an artist' (as opposed to, e.g., and artisan or lay person), for example. But that is another story.

I'm visiting the US in November, almost on a whim (or, on an urge as whim-like as a transatlantic trip can ever be, which except perhaps for the very rich is not very). I'm getting more and more excited the more I think about it. Not just to see my family, but also because I realised that I haven't been home in autumn in years.

It was always my favourite season, back home. Here, where there are few trees and the summer is bright but intermittent and cool, autumn feels like little more than a closing down of the most recent year's attempt at fecund verdancy -- and even that is confused by the fact that the grass, which accounts for a large part of the greenness, stays bright green all year 'round. Autumn is a season for bracing, for withdrawing, for sloping down the long dark hill of winter.

But in a temperate forest, autumn is glorious. Early autumn, in particular -- when the trees are just starting to turn and the summer berries are still left hanging, overripe or shrivelled on the bushes after a long hot summer -- feels restful and welcome, like lying down after a heavy meal. And the leaves are beautiful, and the woods smell wonderful.

Oddly enough, just thinking about how nice a forest autumn is has me focusing on the beauty of the few trees around me this year, and actually enjoying the season rather than dreading it as in past years. I'm going to miss the early autumn at home, but I can at least enjoy it here. There's a cycle path near my house that's set down in a shallow ravine, with trees on either side, where you can almost pretend you're in a forest. I find it immeasurably restorative; I miss forests so much.

I decided not to do the MSc. Mostly because the tuition this year turned out to be so (prohibitively) helluvamuch higher than last year's, which is what I'd been speculatively budgeting for since that's what was in the info packet when I applied. Still, I'm pretty happy with this decision. I think maybe I was too unsure about all the other reasons to do or not do an expensive second Masters that jumping into it at this stage would've been unwise. It could have turned out great, sure, but it might also have been disastrous and mental-breakdowny.

Instead, I've decided to spend this time skilling up. I've got a hand-me-down violin from my sister, which I'm determined to learn to play, and a book from work that promises to teach me C++ in 21 days (and a new flatmate who's a professional programmer, to pester with questions if need be). Speaking of which, Harry and I are all moved in to our new flat now. Which is to say, Harry has unpacked and neatly arranged his belongings, and the floor all available surfaces of our room are covered in tipped-over bags and boxes half-full of my junk.

I've spent most of the afternoon dressing up our little window. I'm quite excited to be able to put up my glass suncatchers again, since I had nowhere safe to hang them all of last year. And I made a curtain rod out of twisted wire, and put it up in front of the window, since the suncatchers are hanging from the pre-installed rod. I feel quite accomplished, despite still having most of my unpacking to do.